Dharamshala, 12th January: According to RFA, a Tibetan college graduate was imprisoned last year in northwest China’s Qinghai province for speaking out against Chinese regulations requiring the teaching of Chinese language in Tibetan areas. Loten, 23, was apprehended on Dec. 20 in Matoe (in Chinese, Maduo) county in the Golog (Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture after complaining of social media to the replacement of Tibetan-language textbooks in local schools.
Loten is now being kept in an undisclosed location in Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai. The Tibetan language has been phased out as a medium of teaching in Tibetan schools in Qinghai as of Sept. 21, 2021, with a greater emphasis on classes in written Chinese and basic Chinese speaking abilities.
In August, two Tibetan students identified as Gyuldrak and Yangrik, both 19, were held by Qinghai authorities in Golog’s Darlag (Dari) county for protesting plans to utilize the Chinese language as the only medium of instruction in Tibetan schools.
The policy has already sparked widespread opposition among Tibetans in neighboring Sichuan, where Tibetan private schools have been closed and children have been sent to government schools due to parents’ concerns about their children’s connection to their native language and culture.
In the fall of 2020, plans to discontinue the use of Mongolian in ethnic Mongolian schools provoked weeks of class boycotts, street protests, and a region-wide crackdown by riot squads and state security officers, which ethnic Mongolians have dubbed “cultural genocide.”
In recent years, Tibetan efforts to define national identity have focused on language rights, with informally organized language schools in monasteries and towns deemed “illegal associations” and teachers detained and arrested, according to reports.